What Kaden could see through the rift entrance was somewhat strange. The remnant seemed to mirror the local area, but even with the fires, things such as trees, grass and so on, while burning, didn't seem to suffer any damage. The flames were real, though. Only those who were able to resist heat, such phoenixes and those who had opposing affinities, such as Ciner, could step closer.

None went in, though. No one could tell yet whether the remnant had wide enough variety of concepts to support anyone going inside.

While others were pondering on this matter, Kaden examined his formations. Some of them had suffered damage as the remnant appeared, but they were still mostly functional. That was a good thing since the sensory formation detected large number of approaching enemies. With that, alarms sounded and the offensive formations triggered.

The offensive formations scattered balls of mana around and they started firing beams into distance while everyone prepared for defense.

Kaden wasn't actually worried. At best it was a good chance to consume more cores and flesh. At worst he would retreat. He felt he was strong enough that he would for sure live until retreat was called. The remnant was only a secondary goal. Who actually was able to make use of it would be the one left after fighting ends.

A dark gathering of clouds started to form upon the area. This was a clear sign of one or more thunderbirds being present. Kaden had learned a bit of this currently hostile Cari clan so he knew enough to tell from size of the cloud that it wasn't someone too strong. Just like phoenixes, thunderbirds were sending their people to gather combat experience and benefits to Madakar.

Bolts of lightning started to fall from the cloud. They weren't enough to penetrate the defensive formations, but they wouldn't last forever and the formations were eating a lot of energy. No one would waste too much time keeping them up and get tired while doing so. No, their purpose was basically to just slow down enemy so you can prepare better.

"Finally a true fight", someone shouted. A dark blue bird with electricity crackling about it flew out of the dark clouds. "A bunch of blashpheming fire chicken and random rabble."

Who the insult was directed was obvious. Reaction was just as obvious.

"Why do you run your beak out there bird of ill omen?" One of the phoenixes replied.

Kaden couldn't resist adding something in.

"What a hypocrite", Kaden said loudly enough to be heard. "As if his clan isn't using the new mana system ... perhaps even himself?"

"Silence!" The thunderbird shouted angrily. This was enhanced with a bolt of lightning, that, yet again, did not penetrate the defensive formations.

Kaden felt he had struck a sore point. Yeah, sure, they were using it too. If they didn't, they would grow weaker over long period of time as others would use it.

"Attack!" The thunderbird shouted and everyone started to rush in.

The defensive formation was one to block attacks, but those strong enough would be able to pass through it with relative ease. That would mean they would need to go into close combat and be somewhat vulnerable as they came through.

Around at this time something started to happen at the remnant. It started to cool down and was soon blowing wind out of the rift. Kaden quickly noted that the fires inside flared up quite a bit as this happened, but soon they fizzled out and whatever was inside the rift resembled tornadoes ripping through everything. Yet, everything still stayed intact.

This was somewhat curious change. The leader of the phoenix group frowned a bit, though.

"This is more valuable than expected!" The phoenix shouted as he struck back an attacker. "This remnant seems to contain concepts for multiple elements!"

It made sense. Elemental spells and mana were the most common among both humans and Cari. Remnant providing materials useful to many, would be valuable.

The thunderbird and his group noted this too.

"It seems this might trigger a larger battle", Kaden though to himself as he shot fireballs at the invaders.

The fight slowed down into battle over the defensive line. Kaden noted that the defensive formation wasn't going to last much longer after he was seeing it crack a bit. No one was even directly concentrating on it since it was going to break anyway. Same could not be said about the offensive formations. One of them suddenly exploded. That wasn't supposed to happen yet.

"Hmmm?" Kaden looked around found one of the offensive formations broken. Something had torn the central portion of it apart. Culprit was nowhere to be seen.

After a moment Kaden was able to sense something odd with his life sense. Unusually mana rich insects? Tiny ants with large concentration of mana in them for their size? A group of them was tearing apart the formations so Kaden shot a fireball.

Surprisingly they gathered together and generated a shield for themselves. Only about half of them died covering for the others. The remaining ones quickly consumed the corpses and moved towards a bush nearby.

"Huh", Kaden was confused as he watched a black mass come together inside the bush in which the tine ants joined.

It was a swarm of ants. Each one had relatively huge amount of mana. The whole mass had roughly the mana density and power of a Lower Cari.

"I have never seen a Cari like this", Kaden though to himself as he prepared for a fight. Others had noted the intruder too, but they were busy and the formations were in general Kaden's problem. "I have read about rare forms of life. These ants are a single creature."

Now sensing it better, he was able to tell that within the mass off ants there was a clump of immobile ones in its center. Some ants that had crystallized together made up its core.

The entire mass of ants had a very rough shape. It didn't seem to have some preset form like one giant ant made out of small ants. It was just ... a mass. Kaden wondered where the thunderbirds had found such a Cari to work for them.

The mass of ants suddenly shuddered and then a ball of liquid was shot out of it. Kaden dodged it quickly and noted the the ground next to him sizzle and melt a hole. Powerful acid.

Kaden retaliated by shooting a few fireballs to test its defenses. A portion of ants had died the last time, but that had been a small amount of them.

As it happens, the mass of ants shielded itself in similar manner, but there was more. If any ants died, Kaden couldn't really see it. Even worse, the ant mass seemed to rotate the injured, and possibly dead ones, inside and fresh ants outside.

"This thing is probably a nasty opponent for most", Kaden mumbled to himself as he avoided more acid balls.

Kaden was about to try a Fire Bomb to scatter the ants, but it turns out he did not need to do so. The mass of ants leaped forward and then burst and spread smaller clumps of ants everywhere. Some even fell on top of Kaden. They started to immediately attack Kaden and crawl under his feathers and wherever they could.

Kaden screeched in rage and unleashed a Fire Blast, but a lot of the ants held on. The damage was still minimal and mostly annoying, but it was everywhere and the bites and the acid burned. If he didn't get the ants off him, there was going to be trouble. The main mass with the core wasn't anywhere to be seen either.

There was still one more spell to be tested against the mass of ants. If fire didn't work due to how they shielded each other, maybe a way to attack each of them at the same time. They were still tiny invidual lives that had come together.

The sound of screech was rather strange. Tiny hisses coming together into a greater screech of anger as Kaden used Life Well at full power. Immediately ants on him shriveled and turned into gray husks that fell off him. The ground dried up and plants crumbled to dust as Kaden absorbed all life around him.

The ants that were a bit further away from him were able to escape and send forth mana to block Kaden's spell. Balls of acid flew from distance again as the ants reformed, now into slightly smaller mass. It didn't seem to really affect its power, since most of the power was stored inside the core.

It was also now keeping greater distance knowing Kaden had very good attack against its very special form.

Since Kaden now knew a weakness, he projected the Life Well towards the ant mass that was now moving around to avoid getting struck.

The fighting lasted longer than Kaden would have prefered, but it happened to move towards inner parts of the area while most fighting was taking place at its edges. There Kaden discovered his experimental formation he had built was still intact.

"Its not very useful against this damn mass of ants", Kaden thought as he burnt away some acid that had hit him. "But perhaps..."

Kaden sent forth a pulse of mana at the formation and activated it. The ants slowed down for a moment as they noted the change. A spectral version of Kaden appeared from the formation. Kaden used very simple commands and the spectral clone rushed towards the main mass without any care. Some acid burned away its form, but not in significant amounts.

A Fire Beam wouldn't be too useful. If Kaden himself couldn't make too much use of it, then a fake version of himself with limited amount of mana wouldn't either. Nor was its Life Well quite as powerful. It was not a living being and it was merely one of its faults that Kaden had not found a way around yet. What it had was huge amount of mana that Kaden had stuffed in it earlier.

The mass of ants realized something was wrong as the clone rushed at it and then started to glow brightly. The ants tried to protect their core and get away as the clone detonated right next to them.

*KABOOM*

"Hmph", Kaden snorted. "Its self destruction isn't quite as powerful either. Truly, it needs more refining. Not only make it fight autonomously, but give it greater energy source."

Kaden had moved a greater distance away and was unscathed. He looked around and found only dead ants, but not the core mass.

Did it survive? Kaden couldn't tell whether it had ran away with loss of significant portion of its mass or whether it had exploded into bits.

Kaden was annoyed. He had wanted to eat the core. As for its 'flesh', it would have been difficult to eat the ants so he hadn't really planned to do that, but the core would have been valuable.

At the very least it was not attacking anymore, whether it was dead or alive, and was gone. If it was still alive, it had likely lost too much of its mass to continue and probably meant it was heavily injured. Kaden decided to ignore it. It was merely a shame that he lost the core.

Kaden looked around and saw that the battle still continued. It would look bad, if he didn't take part in it seriously now that his opponent was gone.

Also, he saw that the rift into the remnant was now leaking out water. It had shifted again. Insides, as usual, were still completely intact, but waves of water were going around.

"It seems to keep changing its elements", Kaden mumbled to himself as he charged towards the fight. "Just wide array of elements will be valuable, but its likely there is some rarer form of mana too that allows these changes."

There were limits to how much worth it would be to own such a remnant while it existed, but it was going higher.